100 Foot Pirod Tower Removal In South Bend, Indiana.
This is the future tower that will be put up at N8VPZ's
house in Cassopolis for the 440 and 900 repeaters!
(And who knows what else!!! Hahaha)
Picture of the 100 foot Pirod tower as it stood when we arrived at 7:00 AM on 10-03-2009
15 minutes after we arrived, it started raining AGAIN!! Notice the rain drops on the lens.
20 minutes after that, you guessed it. "YES" that is the sun shining!! A couple of unique cell phone pictures of the tower before the crane got there.
The crew awaiting the crane arrival. Jim KC9IRY, Mike, Dan N8VPZ, Toby KB9TQM, Bill KC8OVZ.
View of the tower from the rear of the crane. We are getting our game plan together!
Tim setting up the crane.
Dan N8VPZ and Mike breaking the nuts loose.
Me KC8OVZ starting the climb up. Approaching the 40' level. Rained all night and morning. The tower was wet and VERY slippery!!
View from the parking lot.
40 plus foot and still climbing!
Parking lot view of me at the 40 foot mark.
Strapping myself to the tower so I can hook the strap on to the tower to pick it off the base.
Strap on! Ready to come down and lift the tower.
Jim said this picture was blurry, but I told him I was just coming down that fast!!!
Free from the base and swinging towards the parking lot.
Tim, the crane operator has it under control. Swinging it to Dan and Mike.
Clearing the vehicles and getting ready to lay it down.
Dan N8VPZ and Mike, steadying the base to lay it down.
Putting down cribbing to lay the tower down on.
Nearly down.
End view of tower. Notice the part number and serial tags are still on the bottom rung!
Down on the parking lot and ready to pull bolts.
Mike removing the safety cable brackets and me starting on the section bolts. And there are a lot of them!!
Skip starting to untie the RG-6 coax for the 802.11A antenna at the top.
Me starting on the nuts and bolts. Man there's a bunch of them!!
Myself KC8OVZ, Phil KB9GIY & Mike removing bolts, Jim KC9IRY supervising! (Hands warm Jim? hahaha)
The old 802-11A Cisco ArrowNet wireless antenna at the top of the tower. The end of the lightning rod was bent over from lightning hits!!
Working the base section loose.
Phil and Dan turning the section around to put it on the trailer.
Loading the base section on the trailer with the help of the crane. Base weighs approx 600 lbs. Pictured, N8VPZ, WB8MFN, KC8OVZ, KB9TQM, KB9GIY.
Skip removing the strap getting ready to strap up the second section.
Second section going on the trailer. 2 down and 3 to go!!
All loaded up and ready to head for Cassopolis!!
This is all that's left!! Oh ya, we took the last 6 nuts too!!
Nicely placed on the trailer and backed up in Dan's drive in Cass.
Side view of tower at it's NEW HOME!!
Pirod tag!! Now it just don't get much better than this!!!
See you on the next project!!